Cairo removes wrong-colored murals

On the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Cairo last month, city authorities were busy removing a 66-metre-long mural from the esteemed guest’s line of sight, The Guardian reports.

Depicting the Pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Nefertiti, the painting was among 40 murals commissioned to beautify the city for Xi’s arrival and was painted by volunteer youth group Rasmet Basma, in Tahrir Square.

But it drew a furious reaction for depicting the two historical figures with dark skin – angering those Egyptians who saw it as reviving Afrocentric claims about the Pharaohs’ origins. The artwork was painted over just hours before Xi landed.

Now, Ahmed Moussa, the 22-year-old founder of Rasmet Basma, was asked by the Cairo governorate to paint over its work, which had been prepared in just five days in late August.

The team used the AI program ChatGPT to generate the designs, which volunteers then painted on the wall.

Moussa said Cairo’s deputy governor and the head of the district visited the site throughout the process and were impressed by the murals – until controversy began to build on social media.

“We used a golden-bronze tone that cast a kind of shadow on the faces at night, so they appeared dark-skinned,” Moussa said.

“We acknowledge our mistake in not consulting specialists in archaeology and art.”

Afrocentrism is a political movement asserting that ancient Egyptian civilization was black African in origin and population.

One user asked whether anyone involved had “even seen what Nefertiti actually looked like”, while others accused Afrocentric groups of appropriating the images to claim Egyptians endorsed their theories.

“Temple carvings from the late period show Egyptian kings depicted alongside captives from parts of Africa, Libya, Syria and Palestine, with the king himself not shown as dark-skinned,” he said.